Chess Match: Blondes vs Brunettes in Moscow

5/23/2012 – Eric van Reem is a German Lufthansa employee and chess organiser. He is also a member of Team Anand and the hero of the last World Championship in Sofia, when he arranged a 40-hour transportation for Vishy when an Icelandic volcano paralysed most of Europe. Eric is maintaining a blog on the World Championship, and has thankfully reported pictorially on an important side event.

The World Chess Championship 2012 is being staged in the Tretyakov Gallery
in Moscow, between the current World Champion Viswanathan Anand of India and
the winner of the Candidates tournament Boris Gelfand of Israel. The match is
over twelve games and lasts from May 11 to 30. The prize fund is US $2.55 million,
the winner getting $1.53 million (60%), the loser $1.02 million (40%).

Moscow impressions by Eric van Reem

Before we come to the main theme of our exposition a quick jaunt through chess
history.

A special chess photo exhibition in the big lobby of the Multimedia Art Museum

Photo by Boris Dolmatovsky of the Karpov-Kasparov match in Moscow 1984

The last picture made the front page "Vedomosti" on May 11, 2012

The caption of the above picture reads: "Chief arbiter of match Svetozar
Gligoric tests a chair of Anatoly Karpov." We seem to remember it had collapsed
under Karpov's weight – probably around 130 pounds in 1984 – which
would explain the smile on Kasparov's face.

It is just a ten minute walk from the museum to the Botvinnik Central Chess
Club, and it is easy to see that you arrived at the right place when you get
there: the above memorial plaque, dedicated to Mikhail Botvinnik, was unveiled
by Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand on the last day of the Botvinnik Memorial
in September 2011. It reads: “Five times World Champion, founder of the
National Chess School, Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik, worked in this building
from 1988 to 1995”.

This was the match all the journalists had been waiting for! On Saturday, 19
May a blitz Scheveningen was taged between a team of blonde players and a team
of brunette players at the Botvinnik Central Chess Club. The regulations were
actually quite simple: a 2100+ Elo was required, but the hair colour was the
main entry ticket, and there was also a dress code: the blondes had to wear
light coloured clothing, brunettes dark costumes.

The tournament under way – genuine competition to the Anand-Gelfand
thing

Eric, 44, from Deventer, The Netherlands, works for Lufthansa as Star Alliance
Controller in the Hub Control Centre at Frankfurt Airport and lives in Dietzenbach,
close to Frankfurt. He studied Dutch and English at Amsterdam University and
for ten years was the Editor of the magazine "Computerschaak". He
was also the press officer of the Chess Classic Mainz tournaments and the Euwe
Memorial 2011 in Amsterdam. Eric wrote the Chess960 rules for the FIDE handbook.
He is married to Svala (from Iceland) and has two sons, Dennis (13) and Nils
(9). Listens to Joe Bonamassa and JJ Grey when writing and editing his blog.

See also

9/26/2017 – The final classical game. The finals has been relatively sedate with three draws until now. But it could all end today with one decisive game. Ding Liren has the black pieces today. It's going to be an exciting game. Games kick off at 13:00 CEST (7:00 AM EST) with live commentary from Tbilisi by GMs Evgeny Miroshnichenko and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili and live updates by our reporters Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal.

See also

7/5/2017 – This is neither prank nor clever wording: Garry Kasparov will be playing in the official St. Louis leg of the Grand Chess Tour from August 14-19, 2017. Please note that this is the Rapid and Blitz competition, just as the ones held in Paris and Levuen these last weeks, and not the classical events. However, this is not an exhibition event, and will determine the official Grand Chess Tour rankings as well as FIDE ratings of the players. Here is the press release.

Video

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